Man gets life sentence for baby-sitter's murder

June 25, 2009

Juan Rivera, convicted for a third time in the 1992 rape and murder of an 11-year-old baby-sitter in Waukegan, was sentenced to life without parole today as a high-profile defense team busily prepared its latest appeal .

A jury found Rivera, 36, guilty on May 8 of the rape and murder of Holly Staker, choosing to rely on testimony that he confessed to the crime although DNA evidence found inside Staker's body was not Rivera's.

"Put him away for life and let us live," said Holly's mother, Nancy Kalinoski, during a victim impact statement to the court before sentencing.

Rivera's brother, Miguel Diaz, said: "This is not over. To the Holly family, I understand what your pain is. My family is suffering every minute just as yours is ... I know the DNA is not his. I don't understand why we're still here."

Defense lawyer Lawrence Marshall, who played a key role in reversing the murder conviction in the high-profile Rolando Cruz case in DuPage County, attended the sentencing, with plans to appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court.

"It's déjà vu all over again," Marshall said earlier this week, maintaining that the trial was unfair and contained numerous errors.

"I thought I had finished with these cases. But when I learned that Rivera had been convicted again in the face of these amazing problems with the case ... I felt a moral pull to do anything in my power to do whatever I can do."

Prosecutors downplayed the contradictory DNA evidence, suggesting the girl might have had sex with someone else before she met Rivera or that the sample had been contaminated.

Defense lawyers argued that the prosecution presented no evidence to back up their suggestions that Holly had been sexually active or that the DNA was contaminated. During the trial, her twin sister testified that Holly had been molested by a neighbor while in third grade.

Also, "The court erred in allowing the state to repeatedly refer to and elicit testimony about the 'red lace panties' Ms. Staker wore on the day of her murder," according to a motion filed by the defense after the third trial.

Those references were "irrelevant and were presented only to draw the inference that Ms. Staker was sexually active," according to the motion, which alleges that the testimony should have been barred under the Rape Shield Act.

Marshall, a professor at Stanford Law School, co-founded and served as legal director for the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. He organized the National Conference on Wrongful Conviction and the Death Penalty in 1998.